PARTY HONCHOS SC cites delay, commutes death penalty to life term
The Supreme Court on Wednesday commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty awarded to a man for murder as the President’s office took too long to reject his mercy plea.
The mercy petition of M.N. Das, sentenced to death for beheading a man, was rejected 11 years after he filed it. Das murdered a man in Assam in 1990. While on bail, he beheaded one Harakanta Das and surrendered with the victim’s head in 1996.
In 1997, the sessions court sentenced him to death which was upheld by the Gauhati HC in 1998 and the SC in 1999.
The same year, he had Chennai: The SC verdict commuting to life imprisonment the death sentence of murder convict M.N. Das of Assam, has brought fresh hope for the three men — Perarivalan, Santhan and Murugan — condemned to the gallows in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The convicts had sent their mercy plea to then Governor Fatima Beevi in 1999. Lawyer N. Chandrasekar, fighting the case for the three, said the present SC verdict “really gives us great hope”. moved a mercy plea before the President, which remained pending for 11 years and was rejected by in 2011. Das then filed a writ petition in the SC pleading for commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment as he had already served 14 years in prison.
On April 11, the SC turned down that same argument in the case of Khalistani militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, who was awarded death penalty for a bomb blast in Delhi in 1993 in which nine persons were killed. His mercy plea was turned down by the President after eight years. When he asked for mercy the SC stated that militants cannot seek mercy by citing inordinate delays in the final call on their appeals.